Let Her Sleep
by Miss Tev
Summary: Rated T just for swearing. Mugen and Jin try to understand their relationship to Fuu as they sit around the campfire. 'This was a constant game they played, trying to see who could get under the other's skin faster..so far it was a tie. R&R!
1. Chapter 1

A tiny ficlet for my own selfish moodyness cure.

Disclaimer: I do not Own Samurai Champloo...T-T

So I added some details and just made it a little more...better. xD

Let her sleep…

The night was calm and peaceful, a perfect picture of a summer's evening. A soft hoot of an owl permeated the dense air. There was the fixings of fairytales in the cloudless sky dotted with a million twinkling stars, a full round moon, and a warm breeze that wafted through the trees like a playful wrathe.

On a night like this, one could almost believe there was no corruption in the world, and that there weren't evil men out there willing to cause others harm for little more then pocket change.…

On a night like this, one could almost believe in salvation, in second chances, and a life's worth of sin repented for and washed away.

One could believe….almost.

A tall swordsman, once called samurai though that title had long ago deserted him, sat near the base of a quietly trickling stream, absently cleaning a set of rare spectacles with the soft edge of his gi.

It had only been one day since the fiasco with the Nagatomi gang had gone down in the last city he had the pleasure of gracing. After tearing open a conflict between two rival yakuza groups in town, and then pouring even more violence into the mix with a nicely garnished bloodbath, and fleeing afterwards, for good measure of course, he was still on his way to Nagasaki.

Jin suspected that fate had deemed it imperative that the course be maintained, as clearly evidenced by the events of the last few that he really had anywhere else to deviate to otherwise. Stranger things had happened. Might as well enjoy the scenery and tranquility while it lasted, which recently was never very long.

"What the hell are you doin' out here, anyway?"

Speak of the devil…

Jin was roused from his musing by the irate question shot from across their rough camp site. The pristinely cleaned glasses were placed meticulously back on the bridge of his nose, purposely taking a bit of time to irritate the other man.

"It's fairly obvious, isn't it? We're taking in a night's rest so we can make the last leg to Nagasaki tomorr-"

"Shut up, smartass! You know what I mean."

Of course he did, but that didn't mean he had to act like it. Jin's head turned slowly and allowed his calm gaze to clash with Mugen's mad lopsided one, peering out from underneath half lidded eyes as he leaned against a boulder by the fire.

How diverse they were, the two of them. Complete opposites in both technique and mannerism. In another time and place Jin would've been absolutely repulsed by the mad dog enough to make wide tracks around him and move along with existance perfectly content to have avoided contact. Now, however, not much was different except that they were both unavoidably tied together by a very fragile, but resiliant knot. In many ways, they were like fire and water. Pfft...Fire and water were even more closely related, and yet Fuu seemed to think they were more like brothers than enemies. Then again, how many mortal foes does one spend a night lounging around the campfire with?

No, what Mugen had meant to ask was 'Why the hell are we traipsing around the hills of Japan for some annoying little brat with almost no information to go on other than god damned sunflowers?'

A valid question, but one he didn't really have an answer for.

"We are fulfilling our promise to Fuu." He uttered while he stood. Instant disdain was clear in Mugen's eyes.

The lanky man scoffed and sat back against the boulder, stretching his long arms over his head.

"That's shit. There's no way I'm gonna believe you're only doing this because of that promise. So why don'tcha stop blowing smoke up my ass."

Eloquent, as always. Though, in it's own right, the statement was completely justified.

A set of silvery grey eyes drifted down to the thin, spindly, sixteen year old lump that was the real reason they were both out here in the middle of the woods. Fuu was sleeping peacefully at the moment, only occasional snoring alerting them that she was still breathing.

Strange, for how hyperactive and perky the girl could be when she was awake, this complete calm was a shocking, though welcome improvement. She was butted up haphazardly against the same boulder that Mugen was leaning on, oddly okay with sleeping near the irritable man despite how little the two of them got along. Mugen didn't seem to be complaining all that much either, which was even more curious. Usually, in a situation like this, the obnoxious fighter would piss and moan up a storm until Fuu either moved or just blocked him out and passed out anyway. Both scenarios were annoying...but at least they were familiar.

It brought Mugen's real question into sharp, and startling clarity.

For some reason, both of their former wills to abandon the girl to her own fate and finally finish their fight in peace and quiet had vanished after they were brought together again in the city. Jin and Mugen, as he suspected his crazed fighting partner was well aware, were perfectly capable of leaving if they wanted to, exactly when and why they wanted to.

And yet….

And yet…here they were.

"Don't tell me you've developed a taste for little girls, Jin.."

The remark was supposed to be jabbingly sarcastic, but utterly harmless, and all the same, it rattled him. Had he really been staring for that long? What in this sleeping common girl's existance had caught his eyes so?As calm as he could, to avoid giving Mugen the satisfaction, he turned away.

"Don't be daft. I was merely contemplating something."

"Pfft, you just keep telling yourself that, buddy. Whatever helps you sleep at night."

Jin was about to make a nasty comment back when Fuu mumbled something and rolled over, curling herself around a ragged blanket.

She was completely defenseless with her back to them…trusting them to protect her in her sleep absolutely…How foolish. Still, Mugen was sleeping just by her side, so she would be safe...and that brought up another quagmire.

"Geeze, if I'd known it was going to take this long-"

"Why are _you_ here?"

The question caught Mugen off guard.

"Wha..?"

Purposely slow, as if addressing a small child, Jin repeated the question, inwardly enjoying the way the other male seemed to bristle like a threatened rooster.

"Why. Are. You.-"

"I heard what you said, bastard!"

"Then why can't you simply answer the question?"

This was a constant game the two of them played, to see who could get under the other's skin faster. So far it was a tie.

"I-..Hey! Don't answer a question with a question, asshole."

"So you don't know either?"

Silence. Jin didn't say it allowed, and Mugen wouldn't admit it, but it was true. Neither one of them knew exactly why they chose to stay. Things hadn't changed all that much for the three of them from before the city to after…

Another quiet mumble, this one a shadow of her laughter, and she seemed to smile in her sleep. She was always so cheerful…even when things got particularly bad. Despite that she was all but defenseless, fragile…and yet resilient to the darkness that Mugen and Jin were used to living in. This, evervescent light that followed her skinny frame around made Fuu seem...fae like, an ethereal being not of this world. In some ways it terrified him, in others..it entranced him, and still others.. infuriated him.

Mental images of the girl, painted in whore's colors, sitting behind the customary wooden slats of the brothel, waiting to be tainted by heinous men even as she reached out to stop their fighting, hit him, and Jin took in a breath of air. There, in her short cropped hair, was a bead ornament from the whore house. It seemed to be glaring at the two of them, calling out their failure to protect her with it's garish decorum. That ornament embodied every thing that Fuu was not, and it seemed so out of place in her hair, moldering that fae-like presence so that he hated it despondently.

Mugen watched as every muscle in Jin's body tensed, and then clenched as he strode across the camp site. Kneeling down silently next to the girl, he reached out with every intention to throw the beaded ornament in the fire.

A calloused hand clamped down on the seeking wrist.

"Don't."

Silver met ruddy brown as they stared each other down.

"Let. Go."

"If you wake her up, I'm never getting' my answers, so forget it and don't touch her."

Was that a hint of protectiveness in his voice?

It was intrigue at this development, and perhaps a little of a completely different emotion, one that had been buried over a decade ago, that kept him quiet.

More to come! ^^


	2. Chapter 2

Hey you guys, sorry it took so long to update. I was having second thoughts as to how many chapters I wanted to make this. Got it figured out now. =P

So, okay. THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR THE REVIEWS! You have no idea how absolutely elated I was to read about people actually _liking _this thing. T~T Brought tears to the ole' eyes.

Thanks go to Tora Lynn, lillyrics123,Luv4Uncas,anonymous(xD),JuJuPop, InTheShadowOfSignificance,Mickey Caresen,and Applecrow for reviewing. It was an honor and a joy.

Disclaimer: I don't own Samurai Champloo, otherwise it would've been longer...

The sun was so damn bright; shinging right in his eyes, too! Mugen grumbled and moved lazily to shield his squinting eyes from the blazing noontime orb. The brambles stuck to the hem of his shirt, and even the damn birds chirping away in the damn trees was enough to set his hackles on the rise.

In short, Mugen was in a terrible mood. He hadn't slept much last night after his little chat with Fish-face, and woke up to the fuzzy body of Momo trying to burrow into his forehead.

After that, Fuu's little rat-thing had left him a _gift_ in his sandals from the night, and Mugen had vowed to gut the little furry bastard if it showed it's ugly mug around him again.

This statement prompted a defense from her that Momo was an animal and didn't know any better.

He was just sure that …

"_If you'd stop fawning o__ver that thing and make yourself useful instead we'd already be in Nagasaki!" He shouted over his shoulder, furiously wiping down his sandals in the stream. _

_Fuu's face scrunched up in irritation as she tried, with some difficulty, to tie the knot of her oobi. She dropped the pink ribbon and grunted in frustration._

"_Oh yeah? Well, if you'd stop complaining, we could be going right now, jerk!"_

"_It won't make much difference with your girly bitching the whole time." _

_He grinned and continued to polish up the already well cleaned shoe, glad that no one could see it._

_The wild man could just imagine how pissed he was making her, and for some reason that was making his day. The thought of some other emotion besides optimism and cheer out of Fuu made her seem more..human…less dream like. Something he was all for. _

_He wasn't prepared for her next words. _

"_Girly bitching? If we hadn't been sidetracked back in town by your stupid "male urges" we could already be there by now!" _

_The entire atmosphere went from irritated banter to hateful spite in a split second. Jin, who'd been standing watch over the forest trail and quietly dozing, now turned his steady gaze inward to watch. This was going to get really ugly, really fast._

_Fuu knew that she'd said the wrong thing when Mugen dropped the shoe in the water and turned around to look at her. Her ribbon lay forgotten on the ground, victim to his bare feet when he approached, crushing it._

_By some miracle Fuu managed to stand her ground and keep eye contact with the raging eyes of her would-be protector. There was a taut silence, broken only by the sound of far off bird cries. _

_The fiery man before her was a man of few emotions. Cynicism, sarcasm, these were familiar. Even the ruthless steel, which he used when fighting, she could deal with. _

_But this, it looked like something hellish had invaded his soul and reflected back his true self. It wasn't a self that she really wanted to see._

_There was a myriad of different things in those eyes, not the least of which was…betrayal? _

"_Pfft," He started widely gesturing at her pettite frame. "As if I'd've gotten far with that much dead weight yapping at me the whole way, little bitch."_

_Jin didn't like where this was going. _

"_All you're good for is complaining, no wonder your parents didn't want you anymore. You can't even deal with men. Pathetic." _

_Her arms dropped. This..this wasn't right.. But he wasn't done. Oh no._

"_Face it, You're about as useful as an eighty year old whore and just as ugly. Shoulda just left you in town to rot as their little bedwarmer, at least then you'd serve some kind of purpose instead of chasing some fairy tale samurai, ungrateful-"_

_Slap. _

_Jin was too shocked to move before Fuu was racing passed him into the woods. _

_Mugen, who had let his crazed mask slip for only a few seconds to reveal hurt, shame, and anger, didn't move a muscle. Probably couldn't. The wind picked up in the clearing, twisting the tails of the ribbon around his feet…._

_She didn't cry…_

_Fuu didn't cry when she ran, and that was the worst part._

So here he was, following the erratic footprints on the path, kicking himself and silently cursing Jin for, as fucking always, being the voice of damn reason.

_If things had not already gotten too far out of hand, the two of them would've looked much like an adult scolding an obnoxious child. _

_Mugen felt more like the latter now than he'd ever been in his youth._

"_I know your level of intelligence makes it hard to follow complex concepts, but do try to keep up." He was placing the straw hat over his eyes, walking onto the path. _

"_Since you've decided to be the big man and caused this problem in the first place, you're going to be the one to fix it." _

"_Wait a minute-"_

"_Quiet."_

_Mugen had never heard Jin's voice deviate from a soft, moderately airy pitched sound, almost like a calm ocean._

_Right now he sounded like a maddened hurricane ready to break over the shores._

"_Make your decision, Mugen, you have four hours to do it, and then I'm coming to find you, like it or not. Fuu had better be with you, or alive, when that happens…."_

_No fighting, no retorts, because both of them knew the truth, and as much as he'd rather eat his own balls than admit it, Mugen had to accept that, or lose the first thing that was genuinely starting to matter to him in his life…._

_They decided to split up, Jin securing a path for them once Mugen found Fuu, and they'd meet up later, in town. That would give Jin plenty of time to prepare a place for them to stay, and Mugen, hopefully, enough time to muster up an apology. Four hours would be enough time..he hoped._

Which was the strangest thing of all, he realized while reading one of the sign posts in the woods. - _Hot Springs…Nagasaki - …_

Two days ago both of them, not just Mugen, would've jumped at the chance of being able to part ways with the girl in the big wide world. Why the hell was he prancing through brambles and fucking woodlands for her? She left THEM!

"_Lighten up, would ya? It's just candy. I'm not trying to poison you, for goodness sake." She laughed, holding a piece of the sticky candy out to him. _

"_Hey! You two promised me you wouldn't fight until after our journey was over, okay?" _

A short sigh, and then he followed the path to the left, hoping his intuition was right.

Jin started down the direction they would've taken to Nagasaki, turning just before a bend that would take him out of view. From his vantage point, he could see Mugen's retreating form and watched him follow Fuu's trail down the path.

"Know that if anything happens to her I will personally see to it that you never get far enough away to take a shit before I kill you."

~~~~Please read and review, thank you! Next Chapter will be up soon!~~~~~~~~~~~~~


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